FIRST PRESS
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LOVING THE WORLD
God gave us a free car (in this market!)
Christ’s body at work & First Presbyterian’s part to play
James 1:27 calls us to “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless… look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” From this calling, the FPC Love Initiative was created. The Love Initiative is devoted to loving and serving children and families in our city who are in a wide array of situations: the foster care system, at risk of separation, kinship guardians (like grandparents), and adoptive families. Many are familiar with our church’s care for foster families in our congregation: prayer, meal trains, babysitting, home repairs, and more. We also host events like KinMart that provide fun, free, back-to-school shopping for kin raising children. We love our foster and kinship families! God has recently called us to expand our outreach to at-risk families in the communities surrounding First Pres. An at-risk family could be a single mother who has escaped from an abusive relationship and needs a crib for her child to sleep in to retain custody. It could be grandparents who have taken in their grandchild despite limited income and mobility. These families’ needs are often great and the resources are few.
Thanks to connections from the South Texas Alliance for Orphans (STAFO), First Pres is now part of a network of churches in the city who are working together to serve at-risk families and, more importantly, connect them with the body of Christ to love and serve them as we do foster families. That’s where this story begins.
A request came in from a Child Protective Services (CPS) case worker about a single grandmother raising her young grandchildren. Her fixed, part-time income was enough to cover bills and food, but her car was in need of costly repairs. Since she had taken in her grandchildren, her part-time hours had been cut at work, reducing her income even further. We responded to the request, offering to help cover the cost of the car repairs so she could safely transport her grandchildren
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